


Of Doors, Beasts, and the Art of Invisibility  (or how John Watson found his Heart in London Below)

by aleuriasedai



Category: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Magical Realism, Multi, how the hell do people tag things, i'll probably add more later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:24:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aleuriasedai/pseuds/aleuriasedai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a new flat, a new job, and a new girlfriend John Watson finally feels like he's moved on with his life and gotten over Sherlock's death. But he soon learns differently when a series of inexplicable events throw a wrench in his domesticity and lead him on a chase through a part of London he never knew existed where he winds up on a quest to save this strange new world and possibly rediscover his heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Doors, Beasts, and the Art of Invisibility  (or how John Watson found his Heart in London Below)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the very first thing I've ever posted on here so hopefully this will come out in a way that makes sense. Thanks so much to verymorstan(wiggleofjudas) for looking this over for me and reassuring me that it's not trash. This isn't beta'd or brit picked. All mistakes are mine. And thanks to my tumblr friends for encouraging me to actually write a thing down and actually post it. I'd especially like to thank Superblue for pushing me to just sit down and write a thing. :) I'm hoping for weekly updates at worst, but they could be slightly more often if I get lucky or inspired.  
> Thank's to Arthur Conan Doyle and Neil Gaiman for created such wonderful worlds and characters for me to play with. And to Moffitt and Gatiss for their lovely interpretation of Sherlock.

John Watson sat behind his desk finishing up his paperwork for the day. He reached up to scratch at the moustache again. Mary seemed to like it but sometimes the itch drove him crazy. As if summoned by his thoughts Mary poked her head around the door.

“Are you almost done John? You’re going to be late if you don’t get going soon.”

She walked over and started straightening things on his desk. John resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He knew it looked disorganized but he knew where everything was and once she put things away he always had trouble finding them again. He supposed this level of organized chaos came from living with Sherlock for so long.

John pushed aside the thought of Sherlock and looked at Mary. She was so neat and pretty and sometimes he wondered how he’d managed to land such a good looking woman. When she’d started working at the clinic he’d barely noticed her, still caught up in a black hole of depression over Sherlock’s death. Surprisingly she must have seen something in him that made him worth fixing and she’d taken to the task with gusto. Forcing him out and about and basically bringing him back to life. Mary had bullied her way around his moods and drug him to the cinema, dinner and department stores, determined that if he lived enough without Sherlock he’d finally realize that Sherlock was not his life. And it had worked, to a point. Mary seemed to believe he was mostly over it now anyway. He wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t just that he’d gotten better at covering it up.

“John. John. You have to go John. You’re going to be late. And don’t forget dinner tonight. It’s very important.” Mary shocked him out of his thoughts. “Right. Dinner. 7 o’clock. I’ve got it Mary” John kissed her on the cheek and headed out the clinic door. He checked his watch. Dammit, he was going to have to catch a cab now. He’d left it too long.

   

                                                                                                 *******************************************************************

 

The woman known as Molly Hooper had always considered herself a sensible person. She’d rebelled time and again against expectations and had found herself a place in the world that she very much enjoyed. As a pathologist she had the opportunity for meaningful work, to find answers for people so they could put their dead to rest, to close a door, so to speak.

Sherlock had spotted her secret after about a year of using her lab as his own personal research station. She was surprised she’d kept it that long as her crush on him often led to her blurting out stupid things at the worst times. She wasn’t surprised that he was familiar with her other world. Of course it would be something someone as observant as Sherlock would pick up on. When he’d come to her for help that day she just couldn’t tell him no. It wasn’t as if she had cut ties with her past, she just generally preferred to keep her identities separate.

Molly did not regret helping Sherlock. It was important. She hadn’t hesitated for a second. But she should have known that it wouldn’t be simple.

And now Molly was hurt and she was running. Running from two of the worst people she could imagine. She could hear the ‘snick, snick’ of a knife opening and closing in the distance and the measured, certain steps of the men chasing her. They were methodical in their pursuit just as they were in their work.

She rounded a corner and slipped and fell in something disgusting.

“No time, doesn’t matter. Run” Molly thought. And she ran.

 

                                                                                               *********************************************************************

 

John walked home through the streets of London after his appointment with Ella. He preferred walking over taking a cab or the tube these days. He liked taking in the sights and feeling the city move around him. He didn’t like to think it had anything to do with Sherlock.

Mary insisted that the appointments with Ella were important. She had convinced him to carry on with therapy even though he didn’t really feel like it helped. But Ella had been getting stranger and stranger lately, hinting at there being more if he’d just be more open-minded. That if he would really take time to look around and understand he might find something he’d been missing.

“Just open your eyes John.” She kept insisting. “You’re not opening the right doors.”

“Doors are important then?” asked John.

“Of course they are” Ella replied. “You never know what you might find on the other side, perhaps a beast to battle. I think you’d like that. Wouldn’t you John?”

“Stranger and Stranger” John thought. He supposed it was a therapist’s job to cryptic. They never seemed to give straight answers to anything.

So here he was walking and looking and trying to take it in.

And he absolutely wasn’t looking for Sherlock. Sherlock was dead. John knew this. But every now and then he’d spot the edge of a grey coat disappearing around a corner or the silhouette of a man on a rooftop and he’d pause.No he wasn’t looking for Sherlock. That would only lead to madness.

Oh well, he supposed if nothing else the exercise was good for his leg. John’s mobile buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the screen. Mary was texting him about dinner tonight. He fired off a response as quickly as he could. Yes, he remembered. Yes, he’d pick her up at 7. Yes, he’d wear the blue tie she bought him.

John made his way back to the flat at a quicker pace now. It wouldn’t do to be late. Mary hated it when he was late. And that meant being at least 10 minutes early. He unlocked the door and dropped his bag on the chair. Deciding he had time for a quick cuppa he headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on. John pretended to ignore the brief stab of pain he felt at the lack of body parts in the refrigerator, grabbed a biscuit, and sat down with his tea.

 

                                                                                             *******************************************************************

 

Molly ran through the strange twisted passageway trying to buy time. She knew they were close, she could hear bits of their strange conversation echoing off the wall of the tunnels they were in. 

She should have known that he would figure it out eventually. She should have known he would send someone after her. But in the two years since Sherlock’s ‘death’ she’d become complacent. And now her family had paid the price. 

Unbidden, a sob escaped her throat. She heard her pursuers pause and then start moving in her direction once more. 

“Shit,” she thought. “Shit, shit, shit.” Don’t think about it Molly.  But she couldn’t get the images out of her head. 

When she’d gotten the note from her father to come to dinner she hadn’t suspected anything untoward. Her family often encouraged her to visit, to return to her roots, so to speak. She’d entered her childhood home bearing gifts of cookies for her little sister and souvenirs from above for her brothers and walked into a nightmare. Through every door another body, her whole family, slaughtered, because of her, until she’d reached her father’s study. 

They’d been standing over his body when she entered and she’d paused just a hair too long. Just long enough for the knife to fly through the air and slice open her side. And then she’d turned and fled. But no matter where she ran they still followed. 

Molly knew she was losing strength quickly. She could feel the blood seeping through the fingers she held against her wound. She had to get away. She couldn’t afford for them to catch her, not only because she knew they wouldn’t be satisfied by merely killing her. No. They’d torture her first because of the secrets she held. 

Molly rounded another corner and ran into a wall. Shit, a dead end. God she was so weak. She struggled to hold onto consciousness. Molly screwed up her courage, concentrated all the will she had left to focus on one person. She reached out, touched the wall, and made a door, back into London above, a door to John Watson. 

 

                                                                                                      ************************************************************** 

 

An hour later John found himself back on the streets of London hurrying to meet Mary for dinner. The sidewalks were a bit crowded and people were pushing and darting in an awkward way that put John off. John turned down a less crowded side street to avoid a bit of the mayhem and tripped over a person who seemed to have just appeared out of nowhere. He only just managed to avoid falling face first onto the pavement.

“Fuck” thought John.

He turned around to make sure the person was ok and almost fell again. John blinked in shock and looked again. It was Molly Hooper. Looking about as grubby as a homeless person, dressed in her usual mishmash of frivolous layers but absolutely filthy. She almost looked unconscious. John bent over to check her pulse and she moaned and shifted to the side. When she turned a bit John could see that she looked to be covered in a great deal of blood. Some of it looked dry and some of it was obviously fresh. 

“Molly, Molly can you hear me?” 

John didn’t want to panic but Molly looked absolutely terrible and John couldn’t comprehend how she’d come to be here at all, much less covered in blood and filth. He could have sworn the street was empty not two seconds ago. 

“Molly I’m going to call for help. Hang in there, please.” John grabbed his mobile from his pocket and started to dial 999 but was interrupted by an incoming call from Mary. 

“Mary. I can’t talk right now. There’s a bit of an emergency.” John was getting frantic and Molly seemed to be trying to mumble something. John bent over to try to hear what she was saying and dropped the phone. He snatched it back up in time to hear Mary’s irritated voice saying, 

“…don’t care what kind of emergency you think you’ve got. It’s going to be an emergency at dinner if you don’t get here on time. And you better be wearing the blue tie.” 

John’s phone made the beep of a disconnected phone call. John turned back to Molly. She was looking at him and he could tell she was in a lot of pain. 

“No hospital John. Take me back to your flat. You can treat me there.” 

Molly struggled to start to get to her feet and slumped back down again. Making a decision John lifted Molly in his arms and started back out onto the main road to head toward his flat. Molly almost seemed to have lost consciousness again. John fretted over what people would think about a man carrying an obviously injured woman through the streets of London but he soon realized that no one appeared to be paying them any attention at all. It was strange, almost like their eyes were sliding around John and Molly. He wondered on it for a second but he didn’t have time to worry about the vagaries of human nature and people’s ability to ignore what they didn’t want to deal with right now. 

John’s mobile rang again and he ignored it. There was no way he could answer the phone while carrying a grown woman. He supposed Mary would figure out he wasn’t going to make it eventually. He’d be in for a world of apologies tomorrow but he knew where his priorities were right now. 

When John finally made it up the stairs to his door he realized he’d forgotten his keys on the side table. John groaned and reached for the door handle anyway. Surprisingly it popped open as soon as he touched it. He supposed he had to get lucky at some point.

John got Molly in the door and onto the couch. He set about collecting his medical kit from the bathroom and some warm water and clean flannels to clean the wound. Slowly he peeled back Molly’s layers and carefully pushed her shirt aside. He started wiping away the blood and he could see that the injury wasn't as bad as he’d thought. It was more like she’d been bleeding a little bit for a long time instead of a lot at once as he’d first assumed.

Molly started to come around when he was applying antiseptic and trying to decide if he should insist on a visit to the hospital for stitches and antibiotics. 

“No hospital John.” Molly said weakly. “I’ll be fine after I sleep. I just need to sleep.” 

Though it went against John’s instincts he decided not to argue with her. 

“You can have my bed. It’s just through there.  Do you need me to carry you again?” 

Molly sat up. “No. I think I can make it. Thank you, John. I knew you’d be able to help. I won’t trouble you past tonight. Thank you again.”

John saw that Molly got into the bed. She seemed to fall asleep almost immediately. He had turned around and headed back to the sitting room to clean up and make a bed out of the sofa when the strangeness of Molly’s words hit him. 

“I knew you’d be able to help,” she'd said.

What the fuck was that supposed to mean? It was just luck that he’d come across her at all. Wasn’t it?

John poured himself a drink, slumped down in his chair and stared at the wall for a minute. This day was all so surreal. Only one other day in his life compared to the bizarreness of today and he always deliberately avoided thinking of that day at all. He felt like he had no idea what to make of anything anymore. John let his head slump back against the chair. Eventually he fell asleep like that. He didn’t wake for the 7 missed calls on his mobile.


End file.
